Christian Teaching about the Afterlife

Question 1

What is the Christian view on the Hindu belief of resurrection?

Answer 1

there is life after death, but not in this world - in a new existence. Christians reject the idea that a human soul can leave one physical body at the point of death and be reborn into a new physical body in this same world

Question 2

Define reincarnation

Answer 2

the idea that a human soul can leave one physical body at the point of death and be reborn into a new physical body in this same world

Question 3

What is the Christian view on Plato’s idea about the soul and body?

Answer 3

reject the Platonic idea that the soul and the body could part company, with the body decomposing while the soul moves on by itself (disembodied existence)

Question 4

What is the basic Christian teaching about life after death?

Answer 4

life after death will take the form of resurrection, where the person will be given a renewed spiritual body in which to continue his or her journey into the next life

Question 5

Why is it important to Christians that Jesus’ tomb was empty?

Answer 5

because it shows that he has been resurrected from death to eternal life. This provides evidence that an afterlife exists

Question 6

What are the two sources for the view that life after death will take the form of resurrection?

Answer 6

1. the idea of the resurrection of the body was around in Judaism by New Testament times (the Pharisees believed it) and it was clearly an idea that Jesus also believed in
2. the ancient Greeks, although they had a range of quite different and sometimes opposing views about the afterlife

Question 7

The idea of life after death is prominent in Jewish scriptures… TRUE/FALSE?

Answer 7

FALSE

but there are references to the possibility of it…

Question 8

What is the scripture that records the death of Abraham?

Answer 8

Genesis 25:8, NIV
“then Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years, and he was gathered to his people”

Question 9

What is the importance of the scripture that records the death of Abraham?

Answer 9

‘he was gathered to his people’ is used of other prominent men of the Old Testament , too. Accounts of the deaths of Ishmael, Issac, Jacob, Moses and his brother Aaron all include this phrase.

DOES NOT MEAN he returned to family land/grave, as in several of these cases, the deceased was buried far away from the land of his birth.
DOES MEAN something of the original man was going to continue and going to join others with whom he was familiar, perhaps loved ones or perhaps people of the same culture or religious belief

Question 10

What is the scripture that prophesies about the end of time in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel?

Answer 10

Daniel 12:2, NIV
“multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt”

Question 11

What is the importance of the scripture that prophesies about the end of time in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel?

Answer 11

passage suggests a future hope and the ‘Last Days’, and there is a clear reference to resurrection

Question 12

What is the final book of the Jewish scriptures? When was it written?

Answer 12

Book of Daniel (165BC)

Question 13

Why was the Book of Daniel (probably) written?

Answer 13

as a way of encouraging Jews who were being prosecuted for their faith

Question 14

Why might people think the mentions of the afterlife in the Book of Daniel lack validity?

Answer 14

it may have been the case that the Jews began to develop their ideas about life after death as a way of coping with their circumstances.

Question 15

During religious persecution, what was the ‘safer’ belief to proclaim? (jews)

Answer 15

During religious persecution, those who remained the most faithful and obedient to God’s commands seemed to be the ones who came off worst, whereas those who wanted to survive at all costs and abandoned Judaism for pragmatic reasons sometimes escaped

Question 16

What was the point of life after death for Jews?

Answer 16

an obvious solution to the problem of God’s apparent injustice in this earthly life. In this life people suffer, sometimes because of their faithfulness to God. Therefore, a God of love and justice must make it possible for those people to be rewarded after death

Question 17

What mainly divided the Jews by the time of Jesus?

Answer 17

in first-century Palestine, debates about life after death divided opinion amongst the Jwish population

Question 18

What did the Sadducees teach about life after death?

Answer 18

it did not exist

Question 19

What idea developed later in Judaism? (regarding life after death)

Answer 19

the idea developed that dead people would be resurrected from their graves in order to begin a new kind of life, once the Messiah has come to liberate people and at a time of God’s choosing

Question 20

How did the ancient Greeks influence Christian ideas about liofe after death?

Answer 20

Plato’s dualist ideas about the body and the soul influenced the Christian view that although we are physical beings, we also have a spiritual soul which is non-physical and which is capable of surviving after the death of the body to return to contemplating the perfect Form of Goodness`

Question 21

Why did the ideas about life after death become much clearer and more certain than the ideas of Judaism?

Answer 21

because of the conviction that Jesus’ death by crucifixion was not the end of the story. Christians believe that after Jesus died on the cross he was resurrected, and they also believe that this is evidence to show that the same will happen to the rest of us

Question 22

According to the Bible, after Jesus died, what happened?

Answer 22

his body was placed in a tomb - but on the 3rd day after his death, when some of his female followers went to the grave to anoint the body, they discovered that the grave was empty, even though the entrance has been guarded and covered with a heavy stone. The stone had been rolled away.

Question 23

Why is the criticism that Jesus was merely just living on in people’s memories (not seen as a physical person walking around as recorded in the gospel accounts), as weak criticism?

Answer 23

accounts make it clear that Jesus was physically present, after his death, in a way that could be experienced by the sense of those who were there. Jesus could be heard, and touched.

Question 24

What happened after Jesus spent some time on earth in physical form? (QUOTE)

Answer 24

he ‘ascended into heaven’

Question 25

What is not clear about Jesus’ ascension into heaven?

Answer 25

whether he discarded the resurrected physical body at this point and lived on in some kind of spiritual form, or whether he continued in the resurrected body for eternity

Question 26

What do most Christians believe? That Jesus discarded the resurrected physical body when he ‘ascended into heaven’, or he continued in the resurrected body for eternity?

Answer 26

he continued to live in the transformed spiritual body

Question 27

What questions did the gospel stories of the afterlife leave unanswered?

Answer 27

was Jesus’ resurrection an experience unique to Jesus, or is it something that everyone can expect, or only those who are believing Christians?

will the resurrection of the dead take place for each individual immediately once they have died, or will it be an event at the end of time?

Question 28

What is discussed in 1 Corinthians 15?

Answer 28

Paul is trying to answer new Christians in the early Church who had questions about the afterlife the gospels left unanswered.
Paul was adamant that Christ had risen from the dead, and took this to be the central fact of Christian faith.
He was also quite clear that the Resurrection of Christ was a promis for all Christians that they too would be resurrected and was not unique to Jesus

Question 29

What metaphor did Paul use in an attempt to explain how life after death can be understood?

Answer 29

metaphor of a seed

Question 30

What questions does the metaphor of a seed (Paul used in an attempt to explain how life after death can be understood) rise?

Answer 30

what is a spiritual body - is it made of material stuff, and if so is it the same kind of material that our bodies are made of before death

Question 31

What was Paul suggesting with the metaphor of the seed?

Answer 31

that the body will be transformed and radically changed, although it is not clear how

Question 32

Recite 2 Corinthians 5:1-3

Answer 32

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked.”

Question 33

Apart from the metaphor of the seed, describe the other 2 metaphors Paul uses

Answer 33

1. Paul’s use of the idea of a tent being replaced by a more solid house suggests an idea at the moment we ‘live in’ the bodies that we have now but they are not truly us, and that we will be given a more substantial and eternal home in the afterlife
2. Paul writes how we will be clothed in heaven rather than naked. The suggestion here is an echo of the Genesis story of the Fall of Adam and Eve, where as soon as the people have committed sin, they realise they are naked and run away to hide from God because they are ashamed. Paul seems to be saying that in this life, we are aware of our own sin and have to be ashamed of who we are, but in the afterlife, God will transform us so that we are not in a state of sin any more

Question 34

Whose ideas does Paul echo, and how?

Answer 34

Paul seems to be echoing Platonic way of understanding this physical life on this earth as temporary and fragile, in contrast with the permanent solid certainty of life in another realm

Question 35

What are the central Christian understanding of life and death? (3)

Answer 35

1. resurrection will involve a bodily life of some form, not just a disembodied spiritual existence. Resurrected bodies will be ‘spiritual’ and ‘glorified’ and no longer capable of being corrupted or destroyed
2. resurrected person will be the same person as the one who died.
3. Christians believe that life after death will be a miracle given by God and not just a natural process. The person is resurrected through the gift and the grace of God, not just because resurrection is something that souls naturally do.